1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and article of manufacture for maintaining message versions at nodes in a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Applications in nodes in a network may communicate using a message program that supports predefined messages. The different nodes in the network may have different message version numbers for the messages. To ensure that nodes communicating in a quorum or domain maintain at least one common message version number, the existing nodes in the quorum may govern the ability of a node attempting to join the quorum by preventing a node from joining that does not support a message version supported by the current nodes in the quorum.
A node seeking to join a quorum may initiate a version negotiation algorithm by sending a version request message to all nodes in the quorum/domain. The version request message contains the minimum and maximum supported versions for each and every predefined supported message. The nodes already in the quorum receiving the join request process the content of the request message to determine the highest supported version for each message. As a version is negotiated for a group of messages, the receiving node stores the negotiated version in volatile memory. After updating the negotiated version for each supported message order in volatile memory, the receiving node sends a response message to the node seeking to join that they may join and communicate in the quorum/domain.
Further, even though nodes may support different message versions, a node system may only support sending one version of a message to all nodes in the domain even if some of the nodes support newer versions and the negotiated order is dependent upon which nodes enter the domain.
Yet further, certain messaging systems may rely on a centralized server and database to manage different versions of messages.
There is a need in the art for an improved technique for managing message versions in nodes in a network.